Kay: The Tragedy of Murdered Indigenous Women is Real. So How Did Activists Turn It Into a Punch Line?

More on Gazan’s alphabet soup combining MMIWG and LGTBQ acronyms:

…And yet for all the report’s heft, its authors never got around to any systematic analysis of who was killing Indigenous women, possibly because the answer turned out to be off-message: A Statistics Canada analysis of court outcomes in homicides of Indigenous women and girls, from 2009 to 2021, determined that “most Indigenous women and girls were killed by someone that they knew (81%), including an intimate partner (35%), acquaintance (24%), or family member (22%).”

What’s more—and this was the disclosure that really made many Canadians wonder why we’d spent CA$53 million on the Inquiry—it turned out that in 86 percent of known cases, the person accused of the homicide was also Indigenous.

It goes without saying that a woman’s death is no less (or more) tragic when she shares the killer’s ethnic background. Moreover, even in cases where an Indigenous man kills an Indigenous woman, it is entirely possible that racism—and, yes, “colonialism”—are at play. Indigenous people have been treated in all sorts of appalling ways in Canada, and the dark legacy of past policies hangs heavily over the lives of many Indigenous communities. No reasonable person would dispute that such historical realities should be considered by any inquiry mandated to investigate the problem of MMIWG. But to pretend that Canada is prosecuting an ongoing nationwide “genocide” against its female Indigenous population is nonsensical.

But there’s more, unfortunately—and here we get to the reason why the tragedy of “MMIWG” recently became something of a punch line among non-Canadian meme merchants who have no idea what the letters even signify….

Source: Kay: The Tragedy of Murdered Indigenous Women is Real. So How Did Activists Turn It Into a Punch Line?

Source: The Tragedy of Murdered Indigenous Women is Real. So How Did Activists Turn It Into a Punch Line?

NDP’s Leah Gazan calls MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ critics ‘bigots’

Understandably mocked for a ridiculously long acronym that throws everything in. Time for plain language rather than this alphabet soup:

NDP MP Leah Gazan is standing by her use of the initialism MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ and denouncing those who are mocking her online for using the term.

A clip of the Winnipeg Centre MP saying “the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” during a news conference in Ottawa went viral this week and sparked backlash, including insults from Elon Musk and U.S. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Bigots are bigots,” Gazan told CBC News in response.

“I certainly am really happy that bigots are offended by my positions around equality. What I am concerned about and certainly motivated — continue to be motivated about — is ending systemic racism in this country.”

MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ stands for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual+. It’s derived in part from the more commonly used initialisms MMIWG (missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls) and 2SLGBTQ+.

Gazan calls the pushback a distraction from the continued violence facing Indigenous women and girls, two-spirit and gender diverse people, along with federal funding cuts to programming aimed at prevention.

“My concern is the fact that Prime Minister [Mark] Carney has gutted funding to deal with something that was recognized as a Canada-wide emergency in the House of Commons unanimously across party lines,” Gazan said. …

Source: NDP’s Leah Gazan calls MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ critics ‘bigots’